The Real Reason Why
by CraZYdUCKIE
Summary: In the Harry Potter books there are many gaps and flaws, as would be expected in such a broad narrative- here's the humourous solution to some of the most common ones, such as why they're stuck in the 18th century and why Ron never talks about his cousin.
1. You're a purist?

**It's like Déjà vu all over again**

**A/N: I always kind of wondered about those moments in time travel stuff that authors generally latch upon as displaying the utter bigotry of the Wizarding World, et cetera, and I thought I'd give a try of explaining some of it. **

Harry had, through some arcane process that required immense power and preparation, travelled back in time to the body of his eleven-year-old self and was currently going to relive his life in an attempt to ensure that the war went better than last time. On the way, however, he was encountering some rather harsh truths about his friends and himself.

"… and we have a squib cousin that's an accountant, but we never talk about him."

Harry gaped at Ron. "What, you buy into that pureblood stuff too? I can't believe this! I thought the Weasleys were good people, but it turns out that you are just as purist as the rest!"

Ron stared at him. "Harry," he said slowly, "My brother Charlie _tames dragons_. My brother Bill _breaks curses_ on tombs in Egypt like a _treasure hunter_. My twin uncles Fabian and Gideon were the most badass Aurors _in the world_. Why the _hell_ would I want to talk about an _accountant_?"

There was a rather awkward pause as Harry digested this. "Ah."

"Yeah," Ron continued, "He may be a squib, but he's also got the most boring job ever invented. If he was a lion tamer or in the SAS or blew stuff up for a living, I'd talk about him all the time, but he's an _accountant_. I don't _want_ to talk about _accountants_. Why do you think I never talk about what my Dad does? It's _boring_!"

"Right. Sorry for assuming that you were a pureblood elitist."

He shrugged. "No harm done. Don't worry about it."


	2. What do you mean, explode?

It was Hermione's second year, and she was frustrated. Using scratchy scrolls of parchment and ticklish quills that constantly required sharpening was interesting for perhaps the first term of her first year. It seemed like an adventure in the second term, made her feel like a historical scholar in the third. By the end of the fourth term, it seemed practically normal and she was proud of how well she was integrating into this foreign culture.

And then came the holidays…

Suddenly she was back to pens that were incredibly convenient and didn't require her to carry easily-breakable bottles of ink, quills and quill sharpeners, back to foldable paper in all its convenient incarnations and highlighters and post-it notes that made everything _so _much easier.

And then came the start of second year…

Sweet Merlin, this wizarding stationary was dumb. Oh, yes, let's use _animal skin_ instead of bits of grass stuck together. Oh, yes, killing heaps of animals is _way_ better than using paper. Yes, let's get everybody to use the _heaviest _system in the _world_. That'll be _great_ for their young bodies, to have to carry that stuff _all over the damn castle_.

At this point, even Hermione Granger's legendary stubbornness gave way and she found herself owling her parents to ask them for some pens and notebooks. As soon as they arrived, she gleefully packed them into her book bag and enjoyed an entire day of convenient and efficient note-taking. Well, until the evening anyway…

She was going over her notes for the day in preparation for writing her Transfiguration essay when Ron, who was playing chess with Harry, glanced across and finally noticed her new stationary.

"'Mione! That's new!"

Hermione grinned proudly. "Yep. My parents sent it by owl this morning."

Both boys had stood up and were wandering over to examine the notebook.

"Pretty handy with the lines already drawn on," commented Harry. "Maybe I'll get some too."

Ron, on the other hand, had a funny look on his face. "This is a weird kind of parchment," he noted. "Where did you get it?"

She chuckled. "It isn't parchment, it's paper!"

His jaw tightened. "And you've been writing spells on this?"

"Sure," she shrugged. "All day."

He was standing stock still now, eyes tense. "Hermione, get out all the stuff you wrote on, I need to look at it."

Hermione frowned. "Why? What's wron-"

He cut her off. "Get it out, now! This is _really_ important."

The witch pulled the notebooks from her book bag and handed them to him, extremely confused. "Are you happy now?"

Ron picked them up and examined each one minutely, before waving the one with the most writing around in the air for a bit.

"What are you _doing_, Ron?"

He was frowning and shifting further away from the fire, squinting at the notebook he was waving around.

"Ron?"

Suddenly his expression grew panicked and he tore the used pages from the notebook, pushing them swiftly into the fire, before quickly replicating the action with the other notebooks.

"Ron! What are you_ doing_?"

At that very moment, the pages from the notebook caught fire and the fireplace was overwhelmed by a rather spectacular large pink and green fireball.

Ron, meanwhile, was waving the now-empty notebooks around and squinting at them again.

Hermione and Harry stared at the fireplace in shock.

After Ron was done, he came over and handed Hermione her notebooks back. "They're clean now," he told her.

She, however was still staring into the fire.

"What was that?" Harry asked, turning his gaze to Ron.

In a somewhat steely tone of voice, Ron replied, "_That_ was why we don't write spells on things other than parchment. If you'd left that for another day, it would have done that in your book bag," he told Hermione.

She finally looked away from the fire. "…but, why don't they tell us that? Somebody could get hurt!"

Ron shrugged. "It's just one of those things that everybody knows."

She scowled. "That's stupid. Why did it do that, anyway?"

He looked from her to Harry, aghast. "You really don't know?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Obviously."

"Get on with it, Ron."

"Well," he began, "First you've got to understand that spells are magical."

Hermione glared at him. "That is the stupidest explanation that I've ever heard."

"Will you let me explain or not?"

She scowled but nodded.

"Anyway, spells are magical. Whether you say them, think them or write them down, they attract ambient magic and concentrate it. It's okay for us to think them because we're magical beings and naturally control it, but stuff like paper can't do it properly. Every living thing is somewhat magical due to the quasi-magic that constitutes life force, so by using the skin of an animal, the magic that the spells attract is dissipated naturally. Got it?"

Harry was frowning. "Wouldn't there be an awful lot of Dark Wizards using wizard skin in order to store spells of more power?"

"That's a good point, actually," Hermione observed.

"Of course they wouldn't use human skin! It doesn't hold ink well over time, so it can't store spells well either. It has the really weird effect of dissipating magic, more than any other material, so it's useless for writing on."

"Oh."

"So I can't use paper to write notes?"

"Nope. Why didn't you ask about why we use parchment? Just about any wizard-raised student could tell you."

Hermione looked pensively into the fireplace. "I just assumed that it was some stupid, traditional reason, I guess."

"Really, Hermione," commented Harry, "You don't give wizards any credit at all."


	3. You Know Who? Who knows who?

They were on the train still, peacefully enjoying Harry's enormous purchase of candy. After a time, Hermione glanced over at Harry.

"Did you really vanquish Lord Voldemort? Because if you can kill people like that, that's kind of scary." She said this very fast. "I was reading about you in some books and apparently you destroyed half the house at the same time, but you were only a baby so you shouldn't have been able to do that. How did you do it?"

"I was only a baby, Hermione," Harry pointed out. "How would I know?"

Ron, meanwhile, was vigorously shaking his head. "You shouldn't say his name, Hermione."

Hermione frowned at him. "Whyever not?"

Harry was also curious to know, and turned to Ron questioningly.

The redhead sighed. "Well, firstly, it causes a lot of people a lot of pain when you say it, so you shouldn't get into the habit. My mum lost both of her brothers, my dad lost his sister and they both lost quite a few friends; just about everybody above the age of twenty has lost friends or family to You-Know-Who, and my mum still cries whenever anybody says his name. Also, during the war, You-Know-Who set up this system to track anybody who said his name, so anybody who did say it got killed; most adults still avoid it, just in case. And then… well, there's a third reason, but it's rather silly."

Hermione nudged him. "Oh, go on. Tell us."

"Well, there's this wizarding fairytale about these three brothers who tricked Death, so Death hunted them down in revenge. They had tricked him out of three magical items; a wand, a stone and an invisibility cloak. The first brother, with the wand, went around duelling anybody he didn't like, and because he caused so much death, and wished it upon his enemies, Death found him and claimed him. The second brother, with the stone, used it to speak to his dead relatives and dead friends, and because he spent so much time talking about death, he was found and claimed too. The third brother, on the other hand, used the invisibility cloak to hide, and he spent all his time celebrating life. Because he never spoke of death, Death never found him until he was ready to die."

Harry stared at Ron. "Right. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Just like the story of Red Riding Hood is supposed to warn children about werewolves and shape-shifters, the story of the three brothers is supposed to teach people about fear and belief. Death had so much power over the eldest brothers because they knew him and spoke of him all the time, so when he tracked them they thought they could best him. If we went around calling You-Know-Who Billy Bob or something all the time, we'd stop fearing him."

Hermione frowned. "But shouldn't we stop fearing him? He's dead, after all," she objected.

"It takes quite a bit of work to keep something dead, Hermione," he told her darkly. "Necromancy and Blood Magic can bring back just about anything, and there's still Death Eaters around who would be quite happy to see You-Know-Who back. Saying his name brings him closer to the living world and makes it easier for some Dark wizard to bring him back."

The three considered this gravely for a while, sitting in the silent compartment thinking dark thoughts.

It might well have remained that way until they reached Hogwarts, but Ron shook himself out of it. "Cauldron Cake?" he suggested, offering one to Hermione with a grin.


	4. Was it all a test?

It was the end of Harry's fifth year, and things were not going well. Sirius was dead, Cedric was dead, the prophecy was gone, his friends had been injured rather seriously, and he had clearly been manipulated once again.

Feeling a deep urge to break things, Harry snatched up some of the shiny objects on Dumbledore's desk and began hurling them at the wall, shouting incoherently all the while.

The Headmaster sat calmly and watched. Once Harry had reached the end of the breakable objects in sight, he snarled in frustration and flung himself into a chair, at which point the venerable wizard began to speak.

"Is there something that you would like to say to me, Harry?"

The fifth year glanced at the broken objects rather guiltily, and avoided Dumbledore's gaze.

"Don't worry about those, my boy. They can be replaced."

Something in the wizard's tone seemed patronising to Harry, so his reply was rather sullen. "Why didn't you tell me about the prophecy?"

Dumbledore's blue eyes were as placid as his voice. "It was not the right time; you were not ready."

Harry looked up, enraged. "I'm clearly ready enough to be manipulated because of it, to battle Voldemort over it, to lead my friends to possibly _die_ for it! Why didn't you tell me?"

The blue gaze was as calm as ever. "You were not ready, my boy."

"I'm not yours, Dumbledore!" Harry retorted. "All you've ever done is manipulate me, prepare me just to fulfil the prophecy you never told me about! What about me, how did you think I would feel? I've spent year after year nearly dying in your little _tests_, pulled into place like some kind of puppet- well, no more! We're through!"

Dumbledore's face hardened at that. "Do you really think so little of me, Harry? Do you really think that I would use you as a pawn without any consideration of your feelings?"

"Well, haven't you been?" Harry demanded belligerently.

The Headmaster's mouth set into a hard line. "I told you about the prophecy, Harry. I told you about your parents, about Tom, about my suspicions regarding the Horcruxes and about your fate- and you rejected it."

Harry was thrown rather off guard by that. "What?"

The wizard flung open one of his drawers. "We'll watch the prophecy first, eh, Harry? And then we can have a proper look at what you called _test_s and see them for what they were."

Harry was rather taken aback by the bitterness in the old man's voice when he said that.

Dumbledore had removed a number of stoppered vials from the drawer and was emptying the silvery substance within into a stone bowl that he had summoned from somewhere. "This is a pensive. It stores memories." He explained shortly. When he was done with the vials, they were shoved back into the drawer and he removed some of the wispy silver from his head, placing that into the bowl as well. Lastly, he tapped the bowl twice with his wand and gestured for Harry to look within.

Harry did so, rather uneasily. What he saw shocked him.

With a strange lurch, both he and the professor were standing in a dank tavern, watching a younger Albus Dumbledore talk with the divination professor. They heard the prophecy, which set Harry's mind reeling, and then immediately stepped into another memory.

"I arranged them to play in a set order," explained Dumbledore.

Suddenly they were in his office again, watching the Headmaster speak aloud to himself. "If what I suspect is true and Tom is still alive, he will try to attack Harry in his first year. How can I stop him?" There was a thoughtful silence, before the wizard spoke again. "He will almost certainly be seeking some means of creating another body, as possession fails after a time." Another silence, once again interrupted by the professor's musing. "I could set a trap within the school, hide Nicholas's stone within the Mirror of Erised…. I will enchant it to conceal the stone from Tom." He was speaking more firmly now, and had started writing out a to do list. "I can ask the teachers to make up some defences, but they will be incidental against the last one and the Mirror. The last gateway can be a door of fire," he continued, scribbling quickly now, "which Severus will make a potion to allow passage though. It will be one-way, and with Tom trapped in the room with the Mirror to keep him occupied until I can perform the ritual to trap his spirit and contain it perpetually. Hmm… If I do the enchantment properly, there will be no way for him to retrieve the stone without an innocent, and the setup of the last defence should ensure that only one person can pass through, which would be Tom and whomever he possesses." The wizard sat back with a contented smile. "Tom will be properly contained and I can devote my whole energies to educating the young, rather than spending my time hunting down Tom's methods of immortality to destroy them." He sighed happily. "Foolproof."

Dumbledore sent Harry a rather sour look as they once again transitioned between memories. "Apparently there are some extraordinarily intelligent fools around."

"So it wasn't a test at all?"

"Harry, you actually messed up my plans quite spectacularly. I could say that the current Voldemort situation is your fault, but that would be unfair- instead, you placed all the blame on me, which is even more unfair." Harry had the grace to look ashamed.

The scene was settling around them and they found themselves in the Hospital Wing. An eleven-year-old Harry was waking up with the Headmaster by his bedside.

"Hello, Harry," the old wizard smiled.

"Hello, Professor Dumbledore. Uh- what happened?"

The professor by the bedside looked suddenly weary. "Lord Voldemort was possessing Professor Quirrel and tried to take the stone; the blood protections given to you by your mother burned him, and Voldemort's spirit fled. When the possession ended, Professor Quirrel died, as happens to all possessed creatures."

"Oh." Harry seemed rather confused. "I thought that Voldemort was dead?"

Dumbledore sighed. "He performed some Dark magics that allowed him to escape the grip of death, keeping him alive even now; he sought the Stone to bring him back to full physical health, as at the moment he is merely a spirit."

"Right." The boy was still quite unsure of himself.

"Unfortunately, for as long as Voldemort lives, he will seek you out. Keeping the Stone at the school was an unsuccessful attempt to trap him; he will find other methods of rejuvenation."

Harry paled. "Voldemort will keep trying to kill me?"

The Headmaster nodded solemnly. "It has to do with a prophecy that was made before you were born. Fortunately, I have placed wards on your aunt's home that will protect you, and while he is unsubstantial it is unlikely that he will attack you at school."

The present-day Harry and Dumbledore, watching from the shadows, were both reacting rather differently to the memory. Dumbledore's face was visibly sad, and his eyes were locked onto the young Harry's features. Harry himself was both fascinated and confused, as he had no memory of this conversation.

The bed-bound Harry had become slightly green and was rather shrilly panicking. "He's going to kill me! I don't want to die!"

Dumbledore tried to soothe him, adding placating, "I will protect you, Harry, and no harm will befall you. Even now I research methods of destroying his immortality."

The boy was still panicking, but had moved onto a different worry. "He'll go after my friends, I'll have to leave them- I'll have to leave the whole magical world, I'll have to leave Britain, I'll have to go live by myself in Antarctica somewhere…"

"… you don't have to go anywhere, Harry, calm down…"

"Oh, I may as well kill myself now, I'll never be able to escape him. I couldn't even kill him the first time…" Harry was sinking into a deep depressive state. "I've got no chance against a Dark wizard!"

Dumbledore had given up on trying to calm the boy and instead fingered his wand thoughtfully. "There's really no need for this kind of overreaction, my boy…" he told him, though it was clear that his heart wasn't in it.

Harry was hyperventilating by this point, working himself into a panic attack.

After a minute of this, Dumbledore sighed heavily and stunned his student, immediately casting the obliviate charm and removing his memory.

That done, he flicked his wand subtly and Harry stirred. From there, the conversation proceeded as Harry remembered it.

"You erased my memory," Harry said accusingly to the Headmaster.

Dumbledore glanced at him rather irritably. "You were planning on giving yourself up to Death Eaters, Harry, you were about to ruin your whole life. What was I supposed to do?"

Harry huffed. "Something else other than erasing my memory, I don't know? You're the clever wizard!"

"Good to hear," remarked the Headmaster dryly. "Do tell me more."

Harry responded by poking his tongue out at him.

"Very mature, Harry."

The next memory took place in Harry's second year, where Dumbledore once again tried to ease Harry into knowledge about the prophecy. Once again, the boy overreacted and the Headmaster erased his memory.

Harry watched rather mournfully as they swirled between memories again. "Do I do this every time?"

"Sometimes you get violent as well," agreed Dumbledore.

At the end of Harry's third year, he worked himself into a frenzy and vowed to go on some kind of rampage against the unfair Ministry and against Peter Pettigrew, while in his fourth year he actually tried to kill himself because, in his own words, "Everything that's ever happened to anybody I loved is my fault."

At the end of that memory, Harry was surprised to find them swirling into another memory, of earlier that year.

"You see, Harry, it is necessary for you to practice Occlumency; Voldemort wants to get into your mind to find out what your power is, so that he can defeat you more easily."

"Because of the prophecy you just told me about?" Harry asked weakly.

Dumbledore nodded. "I believe that the power that protects you is love; your mother's love, which protected you originally, still surrounds you."

"How will love save me?" Harry snarled.

The aged wizard appeared troubled. "I believe that you have a Horcrux within you, Harry; remember I was telling you about those earlier?" Harry nodded. "If my suspicions are correct, part of his soul resides within your scar, which explains your psychic connection with Voldemort. The way to be rid of this is for him to kill you, but you should survive because of your blood in his veins. The blood protection, Harry, your mother's love, it will protect you when the time comes."

Harry slumped down in his seat. "I don't want to die," he whispered. He looked up. "He'll know now, won't he? Since you told me just now, and with the connection. He'll know and stop it from working."

The Headmaster sighed. "Yes, Harry. That is why you must learn Occlumency."

"But that won't be fast enough, Professor! I can't learn it before bedtime!" His panic ceased, however, when an idea occurred to him. "You could obliviate me," he suggested. "I won't remember and Voldemort can't use it against me."

Dumbledore sighed. "That I could; but are you sure that it is the right option, my boy?"

"Yes," he said firmly.

A flick of the wand later, the conversation proceeded exactly as Harry remembered.

At the end of the memory, they were deposited back into the real world and Harry stared at Dumbledore in shock.

"I asked to have my memory erased."

"Yes, you did." Dumbledore raised his wand. "And now you understand why I must do what I do now…"


	5. Cauldron bottom thickness

Harry was sitting in the library when Hermione found him. She had assumed that he was doodling or working on an essay, but instead he was, unusually, doing non-school-related research. Or at least he _was_- at the present time, he was frowning at the stacks of books surrounding him.

"Hermione," he said in a rather odd tone of voice, "Why does the Ministry exist?"

"What?" she asked, taken aback by the unexpected question.

"Why does it exist? What's the point of it?"

She paused.

He looked up at her expectantly.

"…making laws?" she offered lamely.

Harry frowned at her.

"Enforcing laws?"

His scowl deepened.

"Regulating cauldron bottom thickness?"

The black expression left his face. "I might believe that one," he conceded.

"Let's go find Ron," Hermione suggested. "I think this might be a muggleborn thing."

"I'm a halfblood," Harry corrected, grabbing his book bag.

She shrugged. "Same difference. Muggle-raised, anyway."

Harry pouted all the way back to the Gryffindor tower, where Ron was thrashing Neville at chess.

"Oh good, two purebloods," Hermione greeted them cheerfully.

Ron and Neville shared a suspicious look. "You're not plotting a muggleborn uprising, are you?"

Hermione visibly perked up at the idea but Harry cut in first. "No, we had a question about wizarding society."

Ron idly checkmated Neville and leaned back in his chair. "Ask away."

"Why does the Ministry exist?"

Neville glanced at Ron. "You want to take this one, or shall I?"

Ron shrugged. "You can do it if you want."

"I wouldn't want to impose, not if there was a particular way that you wanted to explain it," Neville replied courteously.

"I would never want to deprive you an opportunity to utilise your full-blooded heritage," Ron insisted.

"Would you just tell us?" demanded Hermione.

Ron fixed her with a smirk. "What did you notice about that conversation?"

She frowned. "It was repetitive, pointless and you were only doing it to irritate me and keep me from learning anything."

Neville grinned broadly. "Exactly!"

"The Ministry exists to irritate Hermione?" asked Harry.

"To irritate wizards," clarified Ron.

Hermione was still frowning. "Why would they want to do that?"

"I don't think we're explaining this very well," Neville remarked.

Ron leaned forward in his seat. "Let's start again then. What is the function of an economy?"

"To distribute limited resources," Hermione recited promptly.

"Is magic a limited resource?"

"No…"

"Magic can create any other resource, so magic effectively means unlimited resources," Neville continued. "So why do we have an economy?"

Harry sniggered. "Because most wizards are too incompetent to magically create what they need."

"Precisely," Neville agreed.

Ron took up the thread. "And the reason they're so incompetent is because the Ministry keeps them that way, by limiting the curriculum and the branches of magic that are legally allowed to be studied."

"The Ministry is intentionally keeping the magical population incompetent in order to have an economy?" Hermione gasped. "But that's horrible!"

Neville sighed. "What does no economy mean?"

"Unlimited resources, everybody gets everything they need," Harry supplied. "Isn't that a good thing?"

Neville's mouth twitched. "So what's the point of leaving the house? What's the point of any other wizards? What stops people from just staying in their own little villages until they inbred themselves to death?"

Harry and Hermione were left speechless at that, so Ron answered for them.

"We need the magical to interact, because otherwise we would die out. We need wizards to need other wizards; you can already see that kind of problem with the Malfoys. They've got all they need in one place and they have a single son, as do most of the other pureblood houses. They're wealthy enough to remain isolated, so their marriages are arranged and they only have single children, which is why most of the really old houses are gone now."

"Your family never had that problem," Neville told Ron admiringly.

"Yeah, we're the pillars of wizarding society," Ron snorted.

"Seriously though," Neville insisted. "People like You-Know-Who never understood the point of it, they railed against the systems keeping them in check without understanding that it's our powerlessness that keeps wizardkind alive."

"Wizards are intentionally keeping themselves useless?" Harry asked with a cocked eyebrow.

Ron looked to Hermione. "I don't suppose you would have read about what they usually refer to as the Merlin Wars?"

"No," she replied helplessly. It was becoming apparent that there was a lot more to being magical than people even considered writing down.

He sighed. "Alright then." Ron glanced at Neville. "You may know it differently; I'll just tell it like my Aunt Muriel told me. Anyway, a very long time ago there was a situation like we described, with a very small population of wizards all isolated from one another. They stayed in their clans and worked for generations to create objects of magical power, which they guarded fiercely and jealously from the other clans."

"How did they have generations if they stayed within the clans?" interrupted Hermione.

"They stole their wives from Muggles or other clans," Neville informed her. "They kept slaves in those days, with enchanted slave collars to keep them docile."

Both Hermione and Harry drew back in horror. "That's terrible," Hermione breathed.

Ron shrugged. "That's just how it was. Anyway, they had these magical artefacts of great power which they guarded more closely than anything else they possessed. The problem was-"

"What kind of artefacts?" Hermione asked.

Harry glared at her. "Do you mind? This is actually a really cool story." Ron nodded his agreement.

"They were usually objects to enhance, replenish or train a person's magic, but some passed down knowledge instantly or made the wearer more intelligent," Neville cut in. "Go on, Ron."

"Anyway, the clans each had this wonderful artefact which they loved above anything else in the world. The problem was, the clans began to hear rumours about the other artefacts, boasting that one clan's creation was better than the other's or that it was more powerful. So the clans arranged a meeting at which every chief brought out their artefact and demonstrated its power, but at the end there was no conclusion as to which was best. So they kept meeting, every full moon for a year, until the lesser clans ceded to the greater and there were only three remaining. Their names are lost to history, but we know their signs: a dragon, an eagle and a fox. After another year, still those three could not show which was best, so they arranged a contest. A tournament, with one representative from each clan, each wearing the artefacts of their clan and its allies."

"Riddles and obstacle courses?" Hermione asked curiously.

Ron gave her a look that spoke volumes about his opinion on her sense of the dramatic. "A fight to the death."

She gasped appropriately. He nodded briefly in satisfaction.

"It would be a battle, not only of strength, but also of wit, skill and knowledge, because they would fight in a forest filled with the most dangerous magical creatures to be found. Three champions were chosen and they trained for a year. Three months in, the clan of the eagle raided the dragon's castle and slaughtered everybody inside but for an old man and a boy who hid in the cellars. The eagle clan could not take their artefact so the old man trained for the tournament despite his age, knowing that to send no champion meant death for his clan."

"Why?" asked Hermione before she could stop herself, shattering the breathless silence that followed Ron's declaration.

"The eagle and fox would take it as weakness and attack again. The dragon was the largest clan originally, the eagle the second largest, so they had thought to gain advantage by killing the champion. After the raid, the fox and the eagle were of the same size while the dragon was the smallest, though they still had the most lesser clans behind them. The three clans had developed an immense hatred for one another and the tournament was the only chance for one to claim victory without having to stand on the charred remains of the other clans to do so," Neville explained, eyes still locked on Ron as if riveted.

"The old man spent months training for the tournament but he knew that there would be no victory for him. He trained for the peace that his death would bring to the clans. The other champions trained as well, but unbeknownst to him, the two other champions had snuck away to meet and try to avoid their fates, for they were young and dreaded death. The eagle champion was a young man and the fox champion was a young woman, and they planned to flee together, because after months of moonlight meetings and stolen moments in the dark they could not bear the thought of killing one another. When the day of the tournament came, each clan sent in its champion and waited for word of victory."

The common room was silent but for Ron's melodic voice, the Gryffindors enraptured by the tale.

"The old man left the boy behind in the care of the four leaders of the greatest dragon-allied clans and entered the forest with tears in his eyes. The clans waited outside the forest for a month, but when no victor emerged they went in themselves, despite the dangerous creatures that roamed there. They discovered the body of the old man, lying where he had slept surrounded by charms and enchantments to ward off the creatures of the forest. They found the marks of a great battle, two wizards against one, leaving the old man dead and another wizard injured. They knew not whether it was the eagle or fox that was injured, so each clan understood the event as a foul deception, a false alliance that ultimately killed their champion. Each cried of betrayal until war was declared. The eagle and the fox fought bitterly, invoking dark and cruel magics in their quest for victory.

"Each battle produced blackened, wasted land and orphans by the dozen, but still they fought. In their vicious struggle, the eagle and fox abandoned those children without great magical strength, training warriors and great mages instead. The clan of the dragon, fostered by the four lesser houses, took the orphans in to the castle it had raised on the site of the old man's death. They fought no clan but instead raised the children with a love of knowledge and of peace, and within the castle was fostered a generation that refused war and rivalries. They continued to take in the abandoned, including those of the muggle population, when the alliance between the four fractured. The last boy of the dragon clan, now a great mage, united the clans but could not repair the friendship of their leaders, so that he ruled a castle empty of those great leaders and teachers. The great mage saw the conflict fostered by the clans and declared them disbanded, making his castle into a school instead. It was a school for the weak, the comparatively powerless; those rejected by the war machines of the eagle and fox. The clans continued to fight, now to avenge their past glory, until there were but a handful of each left. The great dragon mage went to them and, with the wealth and power that his weaklings had achieved by their peace, exiled them from the isles. Do you know what he told them?" Ron asked, leaning forward.

The magic of the moment was such that even the seventh years shook their heads childishly, even those that already knew the answer.

"Strength is in weakness, he said. With great power comes arrogance, with arrogance comes jealousy and with jealousy comes hate. Your hate brought doom to your people, but it will not bring doom to mine. Enjoy your power, but enjoy it far from here. We are weak, but we have more strength in our weakness than you ever did in your power."

There was a rather large noise as the room full of Gryffindors simultaneously let out their breath and then laughed at the sound.

"Is that true?" Hermione asked, eyes wide with a desperate longing. "Did it really happen like that?"

"That's how the legend goes," shrugged Ron. "Hogwarts has been searched a million times but they've never found the old man's grave, so it may not be true."

"Wait," Harry interrupted. "The castle was Hogwarts?"

Neville sniggered. "Why do you think our motto is, 'never tickle a sleeping dragon'?"

He shifted uncomfortably on the carpet. "I never thought about it, I guess."

"The eagles went and formed Durmstrang, as the legend goes," Ron added. "A brother and sister built themselves a castle and filled it with all the untrained wizards from the local population. The fox clan went to southern France and built themselves a palace and that's how Beauxbatons was founded."

"Fascinating," whispered Hermione. "Why haven't I found this legend anywhere?"

"Did you look in children's books?"

"No."

"Well, there you go. Moral of the story is, wizards shouldn't have too much power." Ron said bluntly.

Hermione was frowning. "So the Ministry exists to keep wizards from gaining power."

"What happened to the other champions?" Harry asked curiously.

Neville shrugged. "I'm not sure, to be honest. There's one story that they ran off to Asia and sparked the magical Golden Age there, but that could just be wishful European thinking."

"If being united was so important when Hogwarts was founded, and you know how important it is, why do you still hate Slytherins so much?" Hermione asked Ron.

He scowled. "The Slytherins in our year are the children of the Death Eaters that burned my uncles to death, that slaughtered my father's two sisters and their families, that murdered all four of my grandparents, two of my great uncles and one of my great aunts. They're the same scum except younger."

"Sorry," she murmured.

Ron shrugged. "Whatever. Just don't ask me to like them. Time for dinner?"

They all nodded assent and headed down to the Great Hall, followed by a group of reverent first years desperate for another story.


End file.
